<html><head><style type='text/css'>p { margin: 0; }</style></head><body><div style='font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; color: #000000'>Stephen Birkett and I have done a lot of experimental work on all this, still in progress.  Papers to be published. Patience all.   AA ----- Original Message ----- From: "Fred Sturm" <fssturm@unm.edu> To: caut@ptg.org Sent: Tuesday, March 1, 2011 12:19:05 PM Subject: Re: [CAUT] Steinway sound On Feb 28, 2011, at 8:20 PM, rwest1@unl.edu wrote: > As Fred states, we don't want to see the hammer wobbling left to   > right, but the fact that the hammer arches back on a hard blow and   > delivers a strike differently and in a different area of the hammer   > from a soft blow, a strike without significant shank distortion, may   > be a good thing, without any more inconsistency of control than a   > rigid shank.  In fact there may be more variability and a wider   > choice of color and volume.  Until, of course, the weight of the   > hammer is not great enough to really punch out the concerto volume.         Well, Askenfeld did speculate that the back and forth wobble might be   the source of the notion of "different touches" producing different   tone quality.  I am skeptical, and think Del is right: the problem is   that it isn't really going to be consistent and controllable. The   hammer wobbles back and forth more than half a time or a whole time   during a blow. If it were in that range, maybe it would be   controllable. But since it goes back and forth more like two to three   times, predicting where it will be on impact is really impossible. And   different wooden shanks, even the same size and shape, will flex   differently, so if you learn the feel of one, it won't apply to another.         IOW, it seems like a nice conceptual thing, but I doubt it works in   practice. BTW, I tentatively think a big portion of the "different   touch" affect comes from the portion of attack sound created by the   key against the keyframe/bed. The importance of the attack portion of   tone is often overlooked, as we tend to focus more on the sustain, and   attack sound has a lot of "noise" in it. Regards, Fred Sturm fssturm@unm.edu http://www.youtube.com/fredsturm </div></body></html>